Sweetnam: HSA Guidance Is Coming

Treasury Benefits Tax Counsel Bill Sweetnam said on
a conference call organized by the ERISA Industry
Committee (ERIC) that the next round of HSA guidance is
“peeking around the door,” according toDeloitte’s Global Employer Rewards Washington
Bulletin for July 19
th
. Sweetnam said the new guidance willanswer a lot of the remaining “nuts and bolts”
questions about HSAs –IRA-type health-care accounts that can be
established to pay for qualified medical expenses of
eligible individuals –and that it will be the last round of HSA guidance
the Treasury Department plans to issue in the immediate
future.

According to Sweetnam, plan sponsors can expect the
guidance to include more details on:

In June, officials at the Treasury Department and the
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) released proposed models for
trust/custodial agreements for HSAs (See
Feds Release Model HSA Documents
).
Earlier, t
he IRS provided guidance on how an individual may
make contributions to an HSA while being covered by a high
deductible health plan (HDHP), a Flexible Spending
Arrangement (FSA) or a Health Reimbursement Arrangement
(HRA) (See
IRS Provides HSA Interaction Guidance
).